John Everett Benson carves an inscription on the facade of the National Gallery of Art’s East Building in Washington in 1978. Photo courtesy of the National Gallery of Art Archives John Everett Benson, a stone carver whose lapidary inscriptions mark the grave of President John F. Kennedy and sites including the National Gallery of Art, conferring elegant permanence and permanent elegance with their stately strokes and serifs, died June 13 in Newport, Rhode Island.
He was 84. His son Nick Benson, who followed him in the trade, confirmed the death but did not cite a cause. “By hammer and hand do all things stand,” goes an old craftsman’s ditty that provided a credo of sorts for Benson, who spent nearly a lifetime coaxing the written word from stone.
Even the mallet he used to strike his chisel was engraved: “BY HAMMER & HAND,” it read. Benson belonged to a distinguished family of New England artists and artisans. In 1927, his father bought the John Stevens Shop, a Newport stone-carving operation founded in 1705, and became one of the most renowned stone carvers of his generation.
John Everett Benson, known as Fud, began working for his father at age 15. He took over in 1961 and several years later received perhaps the most significant of many notable commissions in what would be a decadeslong career. At age 25, following Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, Benson was entrusted with designing and hand-carving the inscriptions at his gravesite at Arlington National Cem.